Method of configuring a printer for vacation periods

ABSTRACT

A method of configuring a printer for vacation periods is provided. The printer is connected to a network server and the method comprises switching the printer between a first operative mode, in which the network server transmits print data to the printer and the printer prints documents, and a second operative mode, in which the printer does not print documents and the network server stores data relating to pending print jobs which have not been printed. When the mode changes from the second mode to the first mode the network server retrieves or generates an electronic summary of the pending print jobs and causes the printer to print a printed summary corresponding to the electronic summary.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No.09/722,148 filed on Nov. 25, 2000 now U.S. Pat. No. 7,064,851, theentire contents of which are herein incorporated by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This invention relates to semi-automatic provision of data and documentsto users. More particularly it relates to printers capable of beingswitched to a “vacation”mode.

CO-PENDING APPLICATIONS

Various methods, systems and apparatus relating to the present inventionare disclosed in the following co-pending applications/granted patentsfiled by the applicant or assignee of the present invention on Nov. 25,2000:

-   Ser. Nos. 09/721,895, 09/721,8944, 09/722,174, 09/721,896,    09/722,148, 09/722,146, 09/721,861, U.S. Pat. No. 6,741,871, Ser.    Nos. 09/722,171, 09/721,858, 09/722,142, 09/722,087, 09/722,141,    09/722,175, 09/722,147, 09/722,172, 09/721,893, 09/722,088,    09/721,862, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,530,339, 6,631,897    The disclosures of these co-pending applications are incorporated    herein by cross-reference.

Various methods, systems and apparatus relating to the present inventionare disclosed in the following co-pending applications/granted patentsfiled by the applicant or assignee of the present invention on Oct. 20,2000:

-   Ser. Nos. 09/693,415, 09/693,219, 09/693,280, 09/693,515,    09/693,705, 09/693,647, 09/693,690, 09/693,593, U.S. Pat. Nos.    6,474,888, 6,627,870, 6,724,374, Ser. Nos. 09/696,514, 09/693,301,    U.S. Pat. No. 6,454,482, Ser. No. 09/693,704, U.S. Pat. Nos.    6,527,365, 6,474,773, 6,550,997    The disclosures of these co-pending applications are incorporated    herein by cross-reference.

Various methods, systems and apparatus relating to the present inventionare disclosed in the following co-pending applications/granted patentsfiled by the applicant or assignee of the present invention on Sep. 15,2000:

-   U.S. Pat. No. 6,679,420, Ser. Nos. 09/669,599, 09/663,701, U.S. Pat.    No. 6,720,985    The disclosures of these co-pending applications are incorporated    herein by cross-reference.

Various methods, systems and apparatus relating to the present inventionare disclosed in the following co-pending applications/granted patentsfiled by the applicant or assignee of the present invention on Jun. 30,2000:

-   Ser. Nos. 09/609,139, 09/608,970, U.S. Pat. No. 6,678,499, Ser. Nos.    09/607,852, 09/607,656, U.S. Pat. No. 6,766,942, Ser. Nos.    09/609,303, 09/610,095, 09/609,596, 09/607,843, 09/607,605,    09/608,178, 09/609,553, 09/609,233, 09/609,149, 09/608,022,    09/607,844, U.S. Pat. No. 6,457,883, Ser. Nos. 09/608,920,    09/607,985, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,398,332, 6,394,573, 6,622,923    The disclosures of these co-pending applications are incorporated    herein by cross-reference.

Various methods, systems and apparatus relating to the present inventionare disclosed in the following co-pending applications/granted patentsfiled by the applicant or assignee of the present invention on May 23,2000:

-   Ser. Nos. 09/575,197, 09/575,195, 09/575,159, 09/575,132,    09/575,123, 09/575,148, 09/575,130, 09/575,165, 09/575,153,    09/575,118, 09/575,131, 09/575,116, 09/575,144, 09/575,139,    09/575,186, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,681,045, 6,728,000, Ser. Nos.    09/575,145, 09/575,192, 09/575,181, 09/575,193, 09/575,183,    09/575,160, 09/575,150, 09/575,169, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,644,642,    6,502,614, 6,622,999, 6,669,385, 6,549,935, Ser. No. 09/575,187,    U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,727,996, 6,591,884, 6,439,706, 6,760,119,    9/575,198, 6,290,349, 6,428,155, 6,785,016, Ser. No. 09/575,174,    09/575,163, U.S. Pat. No. 6,737,591, Ser. No. 09/575,154,    09/575,129, 09/575,124, 09/575,188, 09/575,189, 09/575,162,    09/575,172, 09/575,170, 09/575,171, 09/575,161, U.S. Pat. No.    6,428,133, 6,526,658, 6,315,399, 6,338,548, 6,540,319, 6,328,431,    6,328,425, Ser. No. 09/575,127, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,383,833, 6,464,332,    6,390,591, Ser. No. 09/575,152, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,328,417, 6,409,323,    6,281,912, 6,604,810, 6,318,920, 6,488,422, Ser. Nos. 09/575,108,    09/575,109, 09/575,110    The disclosures of these co-pending applications are incorporated    herein by cross-reference.

BACKGROUND ART

Current on-demand printers, such as laser printers, generally have twoeffective modes, on and off. When turned on, a printer will, generally,accept and print any print job sent to it. When turned off, the printerneither accepts nor prints any print job. We have proposed in ourco-pending application U.S. Ser. No. 09/722,142, the contents of whichis incorporated herein by reference, a system in which a printer ispermanently connected to a network. The user of the printer subscribesto publications, such as newspapers and the network sends print jobs tothe printer in fulfillment of the user's subscriptions.

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION

In one broad form the invention provides printing system including aprinter for printing documents based at least in part on print data anda server for receiving and/or generating print jobs and for transmittingprint data to the printer corresponding to the print jobs, the systemhaving a first operative mode in which the server transmits print datato the printer and the printer prints documents and a second operativemode, in which the printer does not print documents and the systemstores data relating to pending print job which has not been printed andwhen the mode changes from the second mode to the first mode the systemretrieves or generates an electronic summary of the pending print jobsand causes the printer to print a printed summary corresponding to theelectronic summary.

The system preferably includes selection mechanisms to enable the userto either delete or print each document. In the preferred form theprinter is a netpage printer and each page of the summary is printedwith tags to enable interaction with the paper directly by way of anetpage pen. The paper may be pre-printed with tags or the printer mayprint the tags with the document summary information.

If netpage tags are provided on the printed summary the user may use anetpage pen or similar sensor to select printing or deletion of eachdocument by selecting an appropriate area on the page(s). The summarymay have a “print all” and a “delete all”options on each page, only thelast or only the first page of the summary.

If the pages are not netpage enabled the documents are preferablyidentified by a separate code or codeword to enable the user to makesimilar selections via an alternate user interface. The interface may bethe control panel of the printer.

After each document is printed, it is preferably deleted from theelectronic summary.

If the user neither deletes nor prints a document it remains on theelectronic summary. The system may delete the electronic summary after apreset period of time, such as a week. This period may be set by thesystem administrator or by the user, or both may be able to set aperiod, the user sets the period being no longer than theadministrator-set period. Administrator set periods may be set globally,for groups or classes of users and/or on an individual basis.

In the preferred form, a summary of documents is only printed when theprinter has been in a specific “vacation” mode. The system may be set upso that it also prints a summary when the printer has been off-line oroff for more than certain periods. The system may automatically printdocuments less than a certain age or may print a summary for alldocuments which have not been printed. This may be set by users for eachprinter or the system administrator may set it for classes of users orprinters and/or an individual basis.

The system may override the user's “vacation” setting to ensure thatimportant documents are printed, without the user being able to preventtheir printing. Where the printer cannot be turned off, this may occurat any time or when the printer mode returns to the “normal” mode. Ifthe printer can be turned off the system may print these documents assoon as the printer is turned on again.

The invention also has application to non-printing subscriptionservices, such as an electronic subscription service in which a usersubscribes to electronic publications rather than to printedpublications. Accordingly, the invention also provides, in one broadform, a document delivery system including a server for receiving and/orgenerating documents and for transmitting said documents to a user, thesystem having a first operative mode in which the server transmitsdocuments to the user and a second operative mode in which the serverdoes not transmit documents to the user and the system stores datarelating to any pending document which has not been transmitted to theuser and, when the mode changes from the second mode to the first modethe system generates an electronic summary of the pending document ordocuments and transmits a user summary corresponding to the electronicsummary to the user.

The document delivery system operates in a similar manner to theprinting system and the features mentioned in relation to the printingsystem apply equally to the document delivery system.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic of a system utilizing the present invention;

FIG. 2 shows a printed summary page;

BEST MODE OF CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION

The preferred embodiment of the invention is implemented in the netpagesystem as disclosed in our co-pending application U.S. Ser. No.09/09/722,142 referred to earlier. In that system printers are connectedto a network and users subscribe to publications such as newspapers andmagazines. The publications are printed on the printers “automatically”with network servers initiating the printing process rather than the enduser. The following description is of an embodiment of the invention asused in the netpage system and for a full explanation of the netpagesystem reference is made to the earlier application. A simplifiedexplanation of the netpage system follows.

Referring to the drawings there is shown a netpage printer 10 connectedto a server 12 via network 14. The server periodically generates printdata 16 which is sent to the printer 10. On receipt of print jobs theprinter prints documents 18 based at least partially on the print data16. The printer is in two-way communication with the server via anyappropriate method and protocol, e.g. LAN, WAN, Internet, radio, ormobile phone system. The printer includes a control panel 20 by whichthe some operations of the printer may be controlled. The printerincludes at least a “normal” mode of operation and a “vacation” mode ofoperation. The printer may also have an “off”mode. These modes areselectable by the control panel. The “off” mode may be selected by aseparate power switch 24 or by the control panel 20. The “vacation” modeand the “off” mode may be the same mode, or the “off” mode may imply the“vacation”mode

In the “normal” mode, the printer 10 accepts print data 16 from theserver and prints the print jobs as soon as possible after receipt ofthe print job or as set by the user or the server; the printer may beset to delay printing print jobs received during the night, forinstance.

In the “off” mode the printer does not accept print data sent to it bythe server 12 and so does not print anything.

The “vacation” mode is for use when the user of the printer is absentfrom the location for a significant period of time, such as when onvacation. As mentioned above, the user subscribes to publications andmay not wish those publications to be printed whilst away. For example,generally, one does not read a two-week old newspaper so printing anewspaper whilst the user is away is wasteful.

Before the user leaves the location, the user uses the control panel 20to switch the printer to “vacation” mode. Alternatively the printer maybe turned “off”, if this is an available option.

When placed in the “vacation” mode, the printer 10 transmits a“vacation” signal 22 to the server indicating that the printer is in“vacation” mode. The printer may send a “vacation” signal once on entryinto the “vacation” mode or it may send the signal periodically. If thesignal is sent once, preferably the server acknowledges receipt of thesignal. If the printer does not receive acknowledgement preferably itresends the “vacation” signal at predetermined intervals until theserver acknowledges. Preferably the “vacation” signal includes datarelating to the time and date that the printer was placed in “vacation”mode. This is to enable the server to determine when the printer enteredthe “vacation” mode, since there may be a delay between entering the“vacation” mode and the server receiving advice of such. This is notessential as the server will keep track of documents which have not beenprinted. The printer may also turn off all functions relating toprinting and optionally not accept print jobs from any source. In thepreferred form of use, the printer is only provided with print data bythe server and so it is not necessary to accommodate other sources ofprint jobs. Once acknowledgement from the server has been received, theprinter may turn itself off totally. The server records that the printeris in “vacation” mode and does not send any print jobs to the printer.Instead the server records information identifying the documents whichwould have been printed if the printer were in the “normal” mode. Thisinformation may be the documents themselves or references to thedocuments.

When the user returns from vacation, the user changes the printer modefrom “vacation” to “normal”. This may be merely by turning the printerback on or by changing modes using the control panel. Preferably whenthe printer is turned on it defaults to the “normal” mode. When theprinter enters the “normal” mode, either on power on or on changing from“vacation” mode, it sends a “normal mode” signal to the print server.Again the server preferably acknowledges receipt of the signal andpreferably the printer will periodically send the signal untilacknowledged. The printer preferably sends a “normal mode” signalwhenever it enters the “normal” mode.

When the server receives a “normal mode” signal, it determines if theprinter has merely been turned on or if it has changed state from a“vacation” mode to a “normal”mode. If the server determines that theprinter has been merely turned on, it sends print data relating to printjobs which should have been printed whilst the printer was off. Howeverif the server determines that the printer state has changed from a“vacation”mode to a “normal” mode, it extracts information relating toall the “pending” documents which would have been printed whilst theprinter was in “vacation” mode. The server then compiles a summary ofthe various documents and forwards this data to the printer to print asummary sheet 30 (see FIG. 2). The user may subscribe to a dailynewspaper and a number of magazines, for example, and so the user maywish to print the magazines but not the newspapers and the summaryenables the user to select what documents to print.

The summary sheet is printed by the printer and the user then perusesthe summary. For each document on the summary there is provided theoption of printing the document 34 or “deleting” the document 36. Inthis context, “deletion” means not printing the document and deletingthe summary entry in the electronic summary, rather than deleting theactual document data itself since a document, such as a newspaper, maybe printed for many users. The user may select one or none of the twooptions for each document of the summary. For those documents where“print” is selected, the server compiles the print job and sendsappropriate print data to the printer for immediate printing. Once thedocument has been successfully printed, the server deletes the referenceto the document for the list of “pending” documents. For“deleted”documents the server deletes the document for the list ofpending documents without printing the document. If the user makes noselection the data in the summary relating to the document is unchanged.

In the preferred embodiment the printer is a netpage printer whichprints netpages, as described our co-pending application U.S. Ser. No.09/09/722,142. Netpages are printed with invisible tags which can besensed by a netpage pen to provide interactive features of the netpage.Selection of an option may be by way of the netpage pen. As analternative the summary may include an ID 38 for each document 32 on thesummary. Options for each document may be entered into the system usingthe printer's control panel or another user interface. This is an optionif the printer is not netpage enabled or a netpage pen is not available.

Preferably the summary sheet includes an option to print everything 40and an option to delete everything 42. Printing or deletion of eachdocument may occur as soon as one of the two options 34,36 is selected.Alternatively any selection(s) may only be activated on clicking on asend button 44 on the page. The print everything and delete everythingoptions 40 and 42 may be printed on each page of the summary, only onthe first page or only on the last page.

The server may maintain a list of pending documents for a predeterminedperiod after a printer is changed from “vacation” mode to “normal” modeand at the end of the period any documents on the summary will bedeleted. This may be a week or forever, for example. Any period may bechosen by the system administrator, such as a week or a month. Ifdesired, the documents may never be deleted. The period may be the samefor all users on the system or it may be capable of being set for eachclass of users or individual users. Each user may have the option ofsetting a period which is shorter, but typically never longer, than thatset by the system administrator.

In an alternate embodiment, when the printer is in the “vacation” mode,it remains online and receives all print jobs sent by the server. Theprinter stores the print job information in its memory but does notprint anything. On changing from “vacation” to “normal” mode, theprinter prints a summary of the stored print jobs for the user to selectfrom. Selected print jobs are printed and the information deleted frommemory, deleted jobs are deleted from the printer memory and jobs whichare neither printed nor deleted remain in the printer's memory for aselected period of time. It will be appreciated that where the printerreceives and stores print jobs a non-volatile memory will be preferredfor document storage. As an alternative, the printer may use its RAMmemory to store print jobs.

In the preferred embodiment the system differentiates between theprinter being in “normal” mode, turned off, off-line or in “vacation”mode and only prints a summary of pending documents if the printer wasin “vacation” mode. It will be appreciated that the system may generatea summary when the printer changes from being off or off-line to beingin “normal” mode as well as from being in “vacation” mode. The summarymay be generated automatically or only if the printer has been off oroff-line for more than a predetermined period of time. For example ifthe printer runs out of paper or ink it may go off-line. If the suppliesare replenished within a few minutes the user would usually desire anypending print jobs to print automatically. However, if the printer hasbeen off-line for a few days the user may prefer to see a summary ofpending print jobs before any of those print jobs are printed. Againthis period may be set by the administrator on a global basis or on anindividual user or class of user basis. The user may be allowed to set adifferent period.

In some circumstances there may be print jobs which must be printed,irrespective of the end user's desires, such as a bill from a serviceprovider. Accordingly, there is an option for the creator of a print jobto specify an “force print”flag such that the document is automaticallyprinted as soon as the printer is set to its “normal” mode.Alternatively the print job may be printed whilst the printer is in its“vacation” mode, with the “force print” flag temporarily overriding the“vacation” mode status.

In the preferred embodiment the server to which the printer sends its“vacation”and “normal” mode signals may be different from the one ormore servers from which print jobs originate, since in the netpagesystem printer specific mode information is typically recorded by one ormore registration servers in a form which may be queried by otherservers. Furthermore, the one or more servers from which print jobsoriginate may be different from the one or more servers from which thepending print jobs or the summary of pending print jobs ultimatelyemerge, since in the netpage system page servers provide persistentstorage of print jobs and may do so even when the target printer is notreceptive

The present invention has been described with reference to a preferredembodiment and number of specific alternative embodiments. However, itwill be appreciated by those skilled in the relevant fields that anumber of other embodiments, differing from those specificallydescribed, will also fall within the spirit and scope of the presentinvention. Accordingly, it will be understood that the invention is notintended to be limited to the specific embodiments described in thepresent specification, including documents incorporated bycross-reference as appropriate. The scope of the invention is onlylimited by the attached claims.

1. A method of configuring a printer for vacation periods, said printerincluding a sensor for sensing coded data, said printer being connectedto a network server, said method comprising switching the printerbetween: a first operative mode, in which the network server transmitsprint data to the printer and the printer prints documents; and a secondoperative mode, in which the printer does not print documents and thenetwork server stores data relating to pending print jobs which have notbeen printed, wherein when the mode changes from the second mode to thefirst mode the network server retrieves or generates an electronicsummary of the pending print jobs and causes the printer to print aprinted summary corresponding to the electronic summary, said printedsummary including coded data readable by the sensor, said coded databeing indicative of a print selection and a delete selection for eachentry.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein a print job selected on theprinted summary for printing is printed, or a print job selected on theprinted summary for deletion is deleted from the electronic summary. 3.The method of claim 2, wherein the a print job selected on the printedsummary for printing is deleted from the electronic summary afterprinting.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein each entry in the electronicsummary is retained for a selected period of time after entering thefirst mode from the second mode unless the respective entry is deletedbeforehand and at the end of the selected period any entries in theelectronic summary are deleted.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein in thesecond mode the server stores the data relating to the print jobs and onchanging from the second to the first mode the server generates theelectronic summary and forwards a print job corresponding to theelectronic summary to the printer.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein inthe second mode the server transmits print data to the printer and theprinter receives and stores the print data and on changing from thesecond to the first mode the printer generates the electronic andprinted summaries.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the printer furtherincludes a user interface for changing the operative mode of the systembetween the first and second modes or vice versa.